Americans have a love-hate relationship with crime. We're
fascinated with it - as long as we're not the victims. We love
watching "Law & Order" and "Court TV" or reading the latest
crime novel, but we hate it when criminals actually target us or
our neighborhoods.

For all sorts of political reasons, Congress has funded some
worthwhile crime-prevention programs in some years, only to pull
the money a year or two later. This makes no sense, and it needs to
change.

Congress and the Bush administration could start by giving
serious consideration to restoring some of the $350 million they've
slashed from the Edward R. Byrne grant program.

Byrne grants give federal assistance to state and local
law-enforcement agencies to fight crimes, some of which reach
beyond their jurisdictions. There are 29 defined "purpose areas"
for Byrne grant money.

Those purely local in nature include neighborhood-watch
programs, specialized drug courts, drug-treatment programs and DUI
rehab programs. Those costs should be borne by the states, as they
are the ones that benefit from those programs, not the federal
government.

Interstate crimes are unique. They are national problems and
often fall to the federal government to solve, but they require the
assistance of state and local police.

Local law enforcement has more manpower and intelligence about
the criminals in their area than their federal counterparts, and so
they are an essential part of the national strategy to combat these
major crimes that affect all of us.

Byrne grants give local police the extra funds and incentive to
do more than just catch the local crooks. No money leads to no
incentive and sometimes no ability to catch some of the bad
guys.

Congress cut total funding for the program by two-thirds, from
$520 million in 2007 to $170 million for this year. These cuts are
hitting law enforcers in every state and thousands of localities.
Rural communities will be the hardest hit, and crime rates
inevitably will go up.

For example, under the federal Adam Walsh Act, states must meet
minimum national sex-offender registration standards established by
Congress or face a 10 percent annual reduction in Byrne grant
funding. By reducing Byrne grants, Congress effectively has
eliminated the state's incentive under the Act to protect its
citizens against sex offenders. That's bad policy.

Crime increasingly is becoming globalized, with international
drug cartels, organized crime operating across all borders, a
thriving Internet child pornography industry, trafficking in
persons and all manner of smuggling of goods and substances.

Byrne grants help law enforcers collaborate, such as in
interagency and interstate task forces, to identify, investigate
and take down these criminal organizations. Without this kind of
coordination, it becomes too expensive for states to attempt to
capture drug distributors, gang leaders and child traffickers.

Without coordination, large criminal enterprises barely feel the
wounds of local law enforcement arresting their low-level
operatives. Fighting these groups effectively requires reaching
further up the chain of command, which takes more than day-to-day
policing.

Like every federal program, Byrne grants aren't perfect. Too
much money goes to local police forces simply to "beef up" their
operations - in other words, for ordinary policing. That's
important, but it's not a federal priority and shouldn't get
federal funding. Too often, police forces use the money to pay for
things they would have bought anyway.

That is the problem with the COPS program, which sought to put
100,000 "new" officers on the street to help cut violent crime
rates. Many detailed research studies show that COPS has failed as
a crime-reduction policy. Yet Congress continues to give it money
every year. The Byrne grant program is different than COPS, but
there's always a risk it could slide too far in that direction.

Like many federal programs, Byrne grants also could use better
evaluation procedures to provide greater information on the
program's value and what grant-making strategies give the most bang
for the buck.

Still, even with these shortcomings, Byrne grants play a vital
role in national crime-fighting. Congress should move quickly to
restore funding to Byrne grant purpose areas that are truly federal
in nature before police departments are forced to reduce the number
of police and programs dedicated to important interstate crime
prevention.

Cully Stimson, a
former prosecutor and defense attorney, is a senior legal fellow at
The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org). Andrew Grossman, a
senior legal policy analyst at Heritage, assisted in the
preparation of this article..